This invention relates to a system and process for improving heating and cooling of rooms in buildings
different types of heating and cooling systems have been used in the past, such as forced air, electrical, water radiator, convection, etc. Generally, these heating and cooling systems are controlled by a thermostat and operate intermittently in response to signals from the thermostat.
The difficulty with all existing heating and cooling systems is that the systems provide heating or cooling to a specific part of a room and then rely on the natural air currents within the actual room to transfer the heat or cooling throughout the room. This is often unsatisfactory because hot and cool air within a room tend to stratify with the hotter air at the top of the room, near the ceiling, and the cooler air at the bottom of the room, near the floor. In other words, a temperature gradient is formed within the room from the floor to the ceiling. This often causes the room to be uncomfortable.
Furthermore, depending on the height of the thermostat on the wall of a room, this temperature gradient may cause the cooling system to operate unnecessarily because the thermostat will sense the temperature of warmer air at the upper half of the room, thereby operating the cooling system even when the average temperature of the room is comfortable. It is apparent that this causes inefficiencies.
For example, when the heating and cooling system is heating a room, in order to heat the lower part of a room to a comfortable temperature, it is often necessary to "over-heat" the upper half of a room. Likewise, when the heating and cooling system is cooling a room it is often necessary to "over-cool" the lower half of a room to obtain a comfortable temperature in the upper half.
In the past, fans have been used to circulate the air within the room in order to balance the temperature within a room. This circulation prevents stratification of the hot and cool air thereby causing the entire room to be at substantially the same temperature.
However, the increased circulation of fans also create inefficiencies. For instance, on cold days, this increased circulation of air within a room causes the air to move across cooler surfaces, such as windows and external walls, thereby increasing the caloric loss of the air over these surfaces and decreasing the efficiency of the overall system. Likewise, it is apparent that similar inefficiencies exist on warm days if fans circulate cooled air across warmer surfaces, such as windows.
These inefficiencies are offset by the efficiencies resulting from operation of the fans during operation of the air conditioning system. However, there is a net decrease in the efficiency of the system if the air is being circulated when the heating system is not operating.